Studying Judith in Anglo-Saxon England

"Studying Judith in Anglo-Saxon England" is an ongoing project to explore the texts that Anglo-Saxons read and wrote about the biblical book of Judith, as well as the relationships between them. The basis of this project is Jerome’s translation of Judith in what is now known as the Vulgate Latin Bible, which forms the center of what may be thought of as a constellation of texts surrounding it. This constellation of texts includes a range of comments and commentary about the biblical book and its central figure, bringing together patristic writings, continental Latin in prose and poetry, Anglo-Latin writings, and Old English texts. Foremost among the Anglo-Saxon texts included in this study are two Old English retellings of the biblical Judith: the Old English poetic Judith and Ælfric’s sermon De Iudith. Though scholars have addressed some of these texts (most prominently, the Old English poetic Judith), this project brings together a corpus of forty-nine diverse texts in order to understand the entire scope of Anglo-Saxon receptions of Judith--both the biblical book and the heroic figure. Future work includes: further text-mining; mapping manuscripts containing these texts, geographically and temporally; marking up texts with XML/TEI; further text editing for sustainable editions and translations.